TRENDS IN SEA ANEMONE DIVERSITY WITH LATITUDE

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TRENDS IN SEA ANEMONE DIVERSITY WITH LATITUDE
Justin Buck Ecology and Evolutionary Biology,
University of Kansas Natural History Museum
(http//web.nhm.ku.edu/inverts/Image/)
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What is a Sea Anemone?

• Benthic, invertebrate marine animal
• Found at all depths in every ocean in the world
• 1037 species

(http//web.nhm.ku.edu/inverts/Image/)
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Diversity Trends of Terrestrial Organisms

• High diversity at equator and lower toward the
  poles
• I compared sea anemone diversity in 10
  latitudinal bands

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Biogeoinformatics of Hexacorals

• http//www.kgs.ku.edu/Hexacoral/

The distributional database was used to determine
the localities where sea anemones have been
observed and collected
The environmental database was used to retrieve
area of ocean surface in 10 bands
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Preliminary Data
N about 8000
I normalized based on area and coastline length,
which are not the same in all 10 bands
Diversity is highest at temperate latitudes
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Area Normalization
N about 8000
Greater richness is at higher latitudes than in
the tropics
This trend is opposite that of terrestrial
organisms
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Coastline Length Normalization
N about 8000
Lowest diversity is at high latitudes in the
northern hemisphere and in the tropics
Highest diversity is at temperate latitudes as
seen with raw numbers
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Conclusion

• The common latitudinal gradient that exists for
  most terrestrial organisms does not exist for sea
  anemones

I conclude, after reviewing the raw numbers and
the normalizations to the data, that the highest
diversity is at temperate latitudes and is lower
in the tropics and at the highest latitudes
Acknowledgments
National Science Foundation REU Supplement to
Grant DEB-9978106 (PEET program) Dr. Fautin and
everyone who works/has worked on the hexacoral
database